Million dollar media battle in Bangladesh

October 22, 2009

http://www.weeklyblitz.net/320/million-dollar-media-battle-in-bangladesh

Largest business conglomerate in Bangladesh, Bashundhara and Transcom are in direct battle, which costs millions of dollars to both sides in recent weeks.

Bashundhara, a business conglomerate now owning dozens of industrial enterprises in the country alongside several massive real estate projects, which has already turned it to be a multi-billion dollar holdings. Started couple of decades back with a very moderate amount of capital, Bashundhara now is considered to be the strongest business leader in Bangladesh with proven track record of succeess stories in various projects, including a large shopping mall in Dhaka city as well as the only private residential area with modern amenities, thus enabling thousands of people in either owning a piece of land or an apartment. Owners of Bashundhara Group are extremely dynamic in undertaking several industrial projects in the country, which are producing products of international quality, thus saving huge amount of money of the nation, which were earlier spent for importing similar products from abroad.

On the other hand, Transcom Conglomerate owns Bangladesh's largest vernacular daily Prothom Alo as well as English daily The Daily Star as well as a number of periodicals and a FM band radion station. It also applied to Bangladesh government during the military controlled intrim rule for establishment of a satellite based television channel.

When Bangladesh Army snatched country's administration on January 11, 2007 under the leadership of Lieutenant General Moeen U Ahmed [later he was made as four star General], executive editor of The Daily Star, Syed Fahim Munayem was shifted from the newspaper office to interim government's Chief Executive's Press Secretary. It was widely known in Bangladesh that editors of Prothom Alo Motiur Rahman and Daily Star's Mahfuz Anam were playing extremely important role in the military controlled regime as their untold advisors and policymakers.

Editor of Daily Prothom Alo, Motiur Rahman earlier worked for Weekly Ekota [a vernacular periodical] published by Communist Party of Bangladesh. During that time, Matiur Rahman was an active member of the party, who has always been a strong critic of the West, democracy and free market economy. Weekly Ekota was forced to seize its publication after the fall of Soviet Union and subsequently Matiur Rahman joined a vernacular daily - Ajker Kagoj for some months.

On the other hand, Daily Star editor Mahfuz Anam, a former official with UNFPA came into media's focal point when the founder editor of this English language daily, S M Ali died and Mahfuz was picked as the editor of the newspaper.

Owners of Transcom Group hails from India's Jolpaiguri district. They are basically tea planters and migrated to Bangladesh after 1947 and were running a number of tea gardens in the country alongwith a jute mills [W Rahman Jute Mills] at country's Chandpur district. Most of the projects owned by the expatriated Indian family were running on loss with huge bank loans while their jute mills was declared laid-off after the independence of Bangladesh, leaving thousands of its workers and employees jobless and the owners of W Rahman Jute Mills even failed to pay the debts of salaries of the workers and employees of the project. Latifur Rahman, the chairman of the Transcom Conglomerate faced series of cases which were lodged with the labor court in Chandpur for his failure to pay salaries to the workers and employees of the W Rahman Jute Mills.

Latifur Rahman married in India's north-eastern province of Assam.

Since 1987, fortune of Transcom Conglomerates started changing when it obtained the exclusive agency of Nestle products in Bangladesh. Since then, the group started acquiring one after another industrial projects in the country, including Pepsi, Phillips etc, thus finally placing Transcom at the forefront of country's economic activities.

Vernacular daily Prothom Alo maintains a secularist editorial policy with anti-West mixture, while The Daily Star is known to be the newspaper with editorial policy of playing important role as anti-Israel and anti-West camp. Although their initial advertisements were provided by Transcom, lately, as Prothom Alo reached the number one position in Bangladesh, this newspaper is making a net profit of few million Takas every month, while The Daily Star makes a stable profit of 10 million Taka monthly.

Prothom Alo – Daily Star media empire picked a number of Bangladeshi business houses in past years as their topic of adverse propaganda. Recently they picked up Bashundhara Conglomerate as their topic and published series of commentaries on it with series of allegations, including encroachment of rivers thus shifting it as residential plots. There are though series of allegations against Bashundhara Conglomerate on various forms of irregularities, including encroachment of rivers and grabbing properties, mostly belonging to weaker sections of the society. One of the dirtectors of the conglomerate is facing murder charge in Bangladesh.

Most of the owners of Bashundhara Conglomerate fled Bangladesh, when military controlled interim government came in power in 2007. Series of investigations were initiated against them and subsequently, several criminal cases were lodged with the local courts by various government agencies on multiple charges. All such issues came prominently in the commentaries published by Daily Prothom Alo.

Sensing possible legal consequences, Bashundhara Conglomerate also started counter-campaign against Prothom Alo and Transcom Conglomerate by publishing advertisements in various national dailies in the country, spending huge amount of money. Large number of posters were also printed and distributed by them with instigative remarks against Prothom Alo branding it as 'enemy of the Prophet of Islam'.

In their lately released advertisement, Bashundhara Conglomerate declared that it is going to commence the publication of a vernacular daily named Dainik Kaler Kontho with eminent journalist Abed Khan as its editor. Earlier, the same Bashundhara Conglomerate joined hands with another vernacular daily newspaper named Dainik Nabojug, which was initiated by celebrated Bangladeshi editor Golam Sarwar, who has earlier very successfully launched two prominent vernacular dailies named Dainik Jugantor and Dainik Shamokal. After making all arrangements for publication of Dainik Nabojug with Golam Sarwar as its editor, Bashundhara Conglomerate suddenly backed out for reason unknown. It was later learnt that, such sudden decision of the Bashundhara Conglomerate was the result of a secret 'suggestions' by the owner of another business conglomerate in the country.

Bashundhara Conglomerate alleged both Prothom Alo and Shamokal for 'conspiring' against it through various reports and commentaries.

They also claimed that, Prothom Alo was active pursuing to destabilize the present ruliung party in Bangladesh thus creating rooms for another military intervention. Bashundhara termed the present ruling party as 'popular government'.

The multi-million Taka newspaper advertisement is mainly aimed at putting counter blame on Prothom Alo with the call to Bangladeshis to seize reading this vernacular daily newspaper.

Bashundhara also claimed that, Prothom Alo is continuing adverse propaganda and conspiracy to sabotage the publication of Dainik Kaler Kontho, which is owned by this business conglomerate. They also blamed Protohom Alo for inventing 'minus-two' formula in Bangladeshi politics, which was basically launched and promoted by the military controlled inteim regime with the goal of excluding both the top figures in country's largest political parties named Bangladesh Nationalist Party and Bangladesh Awami League.

Bashundhara Conglomerate, in its advertisement said, "Say No to Yellow Journalism – Say No to Prothom Alo".

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